“If you’re ever feeling lost or uncertain, just flip a coin. It won’t tell you what to do, but it will help you to listen to your intuition.”
For many of us, analytical paralysis is a serious issue. We become mired in thought, analyzing the advantages and disadvantages in an effort to make the best decision.
They advise to “trust your gut,” and I for one would love to heed their words. But sometimes I can’t tune into what my stomach is saying me because my head can become so preoccupied with a choice and cause so much physical discomfort.
Of course, there are situations when there is no ideal option. Sometimes you just have to make a choice, and flipping a coin seems like the best option. Which movie, A or B? Toss a coin; it makes no difference.
However, there is an other technique to use the coin flip to decide, they are quite important. This technique is less popular, but ever since I learned it, it’s been my go-to life hack whenever I need to sift through all the mental commotion and discover what I truly think and feel.
It goes as follows: Choose either Heads or Tails, and then flip the coin as usual. Check out the outcome. And if your initial thought is “Hmm, flip again?,” you are quite certain of what you want. If you’re pleased with the outcome, you also plainly know what to do next. The instant the decision is made, your genuine feelings about it become clear and you realize what you had been wanting all along.
This technique has prevented me from taking jobs I didn’t really want but felt I ‘should’ accept; it has let me go on amazing dates when I was feeling anxious about them; and it has enabled me to overcome my own resistance to acknowledging when I need help in life.
It’s like a Swiss Army knife for making choices.
This approach won’t make you successful with your stock options, but it will help you better understand your own thoughts and feelings in a variety of different situations when your gut instinct will be the deciding factor.
Try it out; all you’ll learn is about your own thoughts.
Let see some questions which crosses our mind:
Q: Should I trust a coin flip?
You should trust your reaction to the coin flip.
Sometimes, it can be hard to know what you really want until you observe whether you are content with the flip, or disappointed. You are still free to do what ever you want to do.
Dan Ariely points out in one of his books that we can spend more time trying to optimize a decision than we would gain by making chosing either option. He picked Duke over MIT when he realized that it wasn’t possible to decide which was “best,” (although, of course Duke is), and he got much better weather in the bargain. Can’t think which book he described this decision-making process in.
Q. Is it possible to flip a coin 100 times and get the same result?
Yes, it is possible, but very very very very improbable.
Probability that you will get the same results in 100 flips = Probability that you will either get 100 heads in 100 flips or 100 tails in 100 flips.
Therefore, the probability = (12)100+(12)100=(12)99≈1.6×10−30
A very very very very small number. That is you would have try to this experiment 100 times a day for 17 trillion trillion years before you would see this result.
Imagine this. If somebody had been doing this experiment since the birth of the universe (approximately 14 billion years) they still wouldn’t have seen this result.